ANOTHER VIEW / Superstorm Sandy

Superstorm Sandy

Published: November 2, 2012 1:00PM

Hurricane Sandy redefined what it means to be in harm's way.

Billed as the perfect storm, an Atlantic maelstrom unrivaled in generations, Sandy became all that and more -- morphing into superstorm Sandy, in the parlance of TV weathercasters, paralyzing and splintering a huge swath of the East Coast, then punishing a quarter of the national map with relentless rain and wind, and even an October blizzard.

The monster that roiled the ocean reached across and roiled the Great Lakes.

The monster that shut down New York became the monster that shut down a presidential campaign.

In that regard, it touched all Americans.

The campaign hiatus was fitting and proper, albeit a political no-brainer for President Barack Obama and GOP rival Mitt Romney. With dozens dead and unaccounted for, with millions without power and wondering about putting their homes and businesses back together, politics needed to take a back seat.

Blunt-spoken New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie perhaps said it best, as he pondered the devastation of his state's coastline, ground zero for Sandy's landfall Monday night.

The job of putting more than 20 storm-ravaged states back in working order will be less dramatic. Millions of New Yorkers in the center of the nation's business nerve wondered how they would be getting to work in the days ahead after the subway system suffered a level of damage it hadn't seen in a century.